orca bear
by the milliner's rook
Summary: AU. There's a fickleness about high school crushes. Or: as he falls in love, she falls out of love.


_Byakuya&Hisana,_ prompt: love in reverse, high school, I don't understand what you said, but I get what you mean.

* * *

"Help you?" Hisana echoes after a pause, glancing at him quizzically. She leans backs on her chair, arms folding across her chest, hiding the face of Jack Skellington. Her Cupid's bow mouth parts, not quite matching the colour of the flush that creeps up her neck. "Byakuya-sama needs my help?"

"Yes."

"And this isn't an early April fool's joke for next year?" She hums, pen rolling back and forth between her fingertips.

"No." He'll lose his temper if this conversation becomes any more circular. "Will you help me? Yes or no."

Silence suits her as she contemplates her response, lips pressed into a thin line. The flush reaches her cheeks, Byakuya notices, choosing not to count every eyelash that draws a shadow across her face, pencilled lines not yet crystallized. He counts the seconds instead. She is satisfactory, he decides. She will do.

"Byakuya-sama," Hisana says slowly, head tilted carefully, considering still. Byakuya waits, staring back, unblinking. "One does not simply strike a deal like this without both parties benefiting. What's in it for me?"

* * *

She's wearing knee-high red socks the first time Byakuya sees her, wetting her finger to turn the magazine page and paying no attention to the world. She's a multitude of autumn copper leaves, a cascade of laughter, grey blue irises shimmering much like a waterfall shines on a summer's day. It only took a moment, even if her eyes missed him and failed to distinguish him from the rest of the world to know that she might stand still and world could and would revolve around her, and his place was with her, wining and dining to such godlike divinity.

"Tell me about her," Hisana says, slowing her step so they don't walk in time. She's dressed like a mime today bar the pale mask, black and white stripes creasing as she twists towards him.

"This way," Byakuya commands, and leads her to the park, there she is, pretty and smiling at children, chatting merrily to one particular girl hoisted on her father's shoulders. "That's her."

""Have you talked to her at least?" There's something akin to amusement in the cadence of her voice, as Hisana rises onto her tiptoes, not exactly gaining a few millimetres in anything except ridiculousness. The seconds pass and Byakuya is rendered momentarily incapable of anything except to stare back at her and not lose the blinking contest.

"That's not how this works."

"I think," Hisana muses with the slightest of a smile, descending to her normal height, clicking her heels without red shoes, "that love and ice cream is a good way to start a relationship as any, Byakuya-sama. Do you have a favourite flavour?"

He doesn't answer and leaves her to guess incorrectly. He still pays for them and blushes when his future bride winks flirtatiously at him, placing change in his hand. There's a momentarily lapse in judgement when he has to be tugged in a certain direction away from the attendant, Matsumoto Rangiku, he learns and remembers how to walk.

* * *

"Explain the bear then!" Her free hand flies up into the air, and this is possibly the most animated he's seen her become. He is unsure what to think about this. This is the third time they've gone for ice cream, and he still cannot bring himself to even utter a single word to Matsumoto, residing much more comfortably in silences and glowers and looking at his shoes while Hisana cheerfully orders for them. _"Where does it come from?"_

"Deus ex machina. Random humour. In Shakespeare we trust." Byakuya flatly mutters, wearily resigning himself to adopting her terminology with a sigh of the greatest regret. He'd seen a variant of that on a few of her t-shirts.

He takes a bite of his vanilla ice cream and avoids the careful rise of a smirk on her face.

"Don't sit on the table, sit on the chair." It is improper, after all, and high school journalists such as Hisana joining him for lunch should follow the same etiquette. Even if this way they are technically eye-level.

"Exercising the right to decline." Her choice of speech leaves something to be desired, to which she only mimics someone else's innocent expression, once she senses his disproval. She shrugs. "The view is nice up here."

"So long as you don't stand." Grumbling with finality, Byakuya takes another bite.

Hisana blinks at him, confusedly glancing through her windblown fringe of hair. "… I don't think you know how to eat ice cream."

"I don't think you know how to sit properly." He informs her curtly, shooting his retort instantaneously.

The laughter that bursts from her is like that bear from that Shakespeare's play. Jubilant and short, utter delight in its quiet corner from where it came. Forgotten in the sudden darkness of the stage, but dwelt on by many curious audiences and spectators.

"Touché," Hisana grins indulgently, acting as if nothing surprising has happened, before she takes a tentative lick of her raspberry sorbet. "I guess we'll agree to disagree."

* * *

It's a temporary awareness, Byakuya thinks, as he spots a certain red-haired skateboarder circle and fist bump Hisana, after she's secured her bicycle in the high tides of morning. It makes sense; he rationalizes, to be more attentive when she's in the vicinity, since she's spent time around him lately. It's a by-product of their acquaintanceship.

He does realize that perhaps he's over thinking it, before he gets distracted by one of her articles stapled to the wall.

* * *

"How bad can I be?" Hisana grins, dressed in green today, green skirt, green shirt, even with green gloves today. "I mean. How bad could _she_ possibly be?"

She does that a lot, he notices. Slipping in references in conversations just to make her smile a little more, even if it's a little awkward to hear. The only reason he recognises this one is that it's one song that she's played constantly on repeat, enough that he could recite the lyrics in his mind without double checking on the internet. In fact, he'd wager that the more relaxed she is around a person, the more they occur; and can only imagine how many happen between her and her friend. And her fascination with the Western culture.

"You talk to me just fine." She persists, and Byakuya bites back the urge to say _it's because you're short. Different. I don't see you like that._ He settles for silence instead. "It's your turn to order, and if you're feeling especially adventurous, ask her." She shrugs, and there's something about the soft edges of her cheeks that wilts somehow. "Use a song lyric."

"I'm not you." Byakuya states with the interest of a glacier at her suggestion.

"It might work one day." Mischief dances her impish expression, and this is exactly the reason Byakuya doesn't talk to most people. They can be irrationally stupid sometimes. And painful to listen to. "Might work for me."

"Good luck with that." Blithely, he replies.

Unfazed, Hisana looks at him, almost losing the words on the tip of his tongue. He wonders if he should narrow the distance; make her feel intimidated for once. Would she retreat if he did, like others before her?

"Talk to her." She says with finality. "If she says no, then at least you tried, you know?"

* * *

It's a date.

"Fantastic. Now, all you owe me is an interview and we're done." Hisana yawns, and there's a sense of accomplishment in the bounce of her steps. The thought leaves him cold, and Byakuya decides not to dwell on it.

What he does dwell on is that split second where Matsumoto froze and glanced at them both, not quite a deer in the headlights, but clearly confused because she'd thought otherwise that—that something. She laughed and scribbled out her number on a napkin, handed it over and effortlessly charming and outrageous. She winks at him and Byakuya is dazed by mortification and blushing hot cheeks.

"We can still hang out, though, if Byakuya-sama wants." Her grin is wide, her teasing unexpectedly gentle. It reminds him of a time when all she did was address him in that manner, jarringly drawing the distinction between them, the quiet journalist and the ice prince, collaborating together and ignoring the rest of the world, and now the barrier has reappeared because their truce has ended. Walls placed there by her. But her smile reaches her eyes and he reads nothing but blitheness, softness and her. "We're friends."

"You don't have to call me 'Byakuya-sama'." He mumbles, suddenly self-conscious.

"I'll keep that in mind. See you at school." Hisana nods, and with a run, is able to catch the bus.

Friends.

There's something discomforting about the word in conjunction to her. Something not quite right.

* * *

"Mary-Jane! Over here!"

At the sound of her voice, Byakuya looks up, even if he knows that she's not addressing him, too far away. He spots her with her bicycle in tow, just as her skateboarding friend races towards her.

"You've got to stop calling me that," Renji rolls his eyes, unimpressed but grinning lopsidedly all the same. "You're no Peter Parker."

She laughs, head bowing all the same. If he squints, which he _won't_, Byakuya could almost suspect that she was blushing.

"Well, I'm not the one who says _jackpot _every time I get a scoop, Renji." She points out and her friend chuckles, as if to say, _guilty as charged_. "I was kind of wondering if…"

"Leave it to me." Renji grins and hands her his skateboard to carry. "I'm too nice for my own good."

"Only 'cause I'm tired." Hisana sighs, and pushes the bicycle towards him.

"Right." He drawls, and easily climbs onto her bicycle. "Get up here, Hisana. I'll even treat you pudding."

"You really are the best." She smiles and makes herself comfortable, secure, relaxed. Do they do this a lot? They must do. He wonders how he's never noticed before. Never wanted to. "Don't get arrogant now."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Renji breezily replies, and begins to pedal in a slow but steady rhythm. Away from school and into the distant sunset.

He's jealous, Byakuya realizes belatedly. Irrationally jealous of a girl who played matchmaker and her best friend who eats with her on the bleachers, and he's watching them like a jilted lover that most decidedly _isn't_ a demon bear that emerges from the woods, destined to maw Antigonus and then vanish from whence it came.

He has a crush on her and wonders if there's enough time that he can sweep her off her feet when they finally sit down for their interview for the paper.


End file.
